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KRITA - free open source paint app


Carlosan
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What is Krita?

 

Krita is a FREE digital painting and illustration application.

Krita offers CMYK support, HDR painting, perspective grids, dockers, filters, painting assistants, and many other features you would expect. Check out the gallery to see what other artists have done with Krita

 

user-interface.jpg

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I have used Krita for years now.  They have a version for Linux and Windows (not sure about MacOS), and a really cool pie menu.   Works really well with a tablet and I have gotten it to work in 3D-Coat as well.  Very cool.  :D

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Does it have a nice stabilization feature ?

Proper blending (best one out there is Clip Studio Paint) and a brush engine capable of creating digital pen as well as nice simulation of traditional tools ?

 

Nope.

 

If yes I'm interested if not I'll stick to Clip Studio paint and imho those still using photoshop for illustration should definitely give it up and go to CSP.

I used photoshop for nearly 20 years and I switched to CSP in the month after trying it... that should speak volume.

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Does it have a nice stabilization feature ?

Proper blending (best one out there is Clip Studio Paint) and a brush engine capable of creating digital pen as well as nice simulation of traditional tools ?

 

If yes I'm interested if not I'll stick to Clip Studio paint and imho those still using photoshop for illustration should definitely give it up and go to CSP.

I used photoshop for nearly 20 years and I switched to CSP in the month after trying it... that should speak volume.

 

That's like asking if 3d Coat has a layer system... =) 

Krita's Stabilization feature is great in my opinion. Pretty much like most 3d software, you get a tool options window (tab). When selecting a brush, a pull down menu appears in the tool options tab allowing for "Basic Smoothing, Weighted Smoothing, and Stabilizer". All function as they should and include sliders for additional settings.

The brush engine is fairly advanced and you can find some great natural media brush packs online. Krita is extremely good and worth adopting into your pipeline, its only going to get more popular as time goes on.

 

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The brush engine is still waaaay behind csp.

Try it you'll see.

 

Didn't find any "default" preset that does pencil as well as csp:

PencilSimulation_0g53.jpg

It may be possible, I didn't use it long, but for a first try it's not convincing:

 

KritaPencil_beff.jpg

 

Just as a precaution: I'm not an advertiser.

I just stumbled upon this software and was really angry at adobe for providing such a poor tool for illustration while the competition was doing an awesome job at making them look ridiculous.

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The brush engine is still waaaay behind csp.

Try it you'll see.

 

Didn't find any "default" preset that does pencil as well as csp:

 

For the best natural media brushes at the moment you either need to make your own or grab some user made ones. I think what you are seeing is a mix of unfamiliarity with the software and how it works as well as the fact that CSP is geared towards a certain kind of media and it does it very well. So it in part depends on what you need out of your software. Krita is far more vast in the art styles it can achieve, on top of that its the workflow that also stands out. It is extremely good with tablet based workflows, whether its scaling the brush, rotating the canvas (make sure openGL is on under configure krita), zooming, snapping..ect Its a very smooth process that doesnt require you to break concentration.

For Pencil Brushes I recommend looking at:

https://krita.org/item/the-muses-preset-pack/

http://www.davidrevoy.com/article180/ressource-krita-brushes

http://www.davidrevoy.com/article238/ressource-krita-brushes-v5

http://meemodraws.deviantart.com/art/Krita-Brush-Pack-311306611

 

Among others....

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Krita 2.9 Beta 2 is Out!

 

//edit

Brushes and painting changelog:
  • The anti-aliasing quality of thin lines has been improved greatly.
  • The smudge brush was improved.
  • The Flow option has finally been separated from opacity.
  • Steps in the undo history can now be merged.
  • The brush preset system was extended to make it possible to keep changes to a certain preset during a session, instead of resetting to the original preset on every brush preset switch.
  • You can lock the size of the brush when switching between paint and erase mode, or have a separate size for each mode.
  • New painting assistants for working with vanishing points and rulers.
  • the line tool will use all sensors now! Rotation, speed, tilt, etc.
  • There’s a sticky key available for accessing the straight line tool from the freehand brush (V).
  • a delayed-stroke based stabilizer option was added for stroke smoothing
  • the weighted smoothing and stabilizer have a ‘delay’ option now, which allows you to create a dead area around your cursor for extra sharp corners.
  • a scalable distance option was added to the weighted stroke smoothing, so now the weight is relative to the zoom.
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@RabenWulf

Tried those presets, they look nicer but still feel off compared to csp (csp get you crisp details in your stroke while krita seems to "muddy" everything depending on brush size and document resolution.)

 

You've got less control over the brush size (in csp you can fine tune the pressure per brush to get exactly the kind of reaction you want with a tablet).

Even the line smoothing is not as clean. I mean if you get it up high it takes shap turns while in csp you get a nice interpolated curve.

 

I don't do anime if that's what you're saying, while I agree with you csp is obviously geared toward manga/anime artists it's still a blast to use it for fine arts which don't even involve lines in the first place.

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@RabenWulf

Tried those presets, they look nicer but still feel off compared to csp (csp get you crisp details in your stroke while krita seems to "muddy" everything depending on brush size and document resolution.)

 

You've got less control over the brush size (in csp you can fine tune the pressure per brush to get exactly the kind of reaction you want with a tablet).

Even the line smoothing is not as clean. I mean if you get it up high it takes shap turns while in csp you get a nice interpolated curve.

 

I don't do anime if that's what you're saying, while I agree with you csp is obviously geared toward manga/anime artists it's still a blast to use it for fine arts which don't even involve lines in the first place.

 

Did you open up the brush editor and enable or tweak some of the behavior you expect from the brush? For example, sometimes people like an opacity or size tied to the pressure, some brushes intentionally have that toggled off. Just turning it on via the brush editor will allow for more. Additionally, lets hypothetically assume that for some reason the pencil effect is just something you like in krita, it would be like me not liking 3D Coat because its sculpt brush doesnt feel or behave exactly in the way I expect it to in say Zbrush. The option is then to either adapt so the new software adapts to new expectations or compare and contrast to see if what you gain is outweighs what is lost. In other words is a certain feel to the pencil brush the deciding factor in usage or are there other considerations. Either the pro outweighs the con or it doesnt. =)

Anyway, see if you can get the effect you want with the brush editor, if not see if you can adapt or give up that feel in one app in favor of another. Krita is free regardless, so its not like you lose anything and if you have a copy of CSP/Manga studio, then its not like there will be any financial pressure on picking one or the other. On a side note some krita artist have shown off great pencil like sketches, so we know it can get results.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...
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27th Jan 2015:

Re Krita: Mac OSX is very experimental right now and unstable. You can download the latest binary if you want. It has only been reported to work with Mac OSX 10.9.

 

Thanks Carlosan for posting this.

Thanks also BeatKitano for the heads up and user feedback on Clip Studio Paint.

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  • 5 weeks later...
Krita 2.9 is released!
krita_2_9_splash.png

GET IT HERE!

This means multiple documents, cage, liquify, transform masks, hdr colour selection, new colour pickers, better gmic intergration and tons of workflow improvements! Check out our release page.

What is still missing/not possible:


  • Layer Styles: A kickstarter item, but won't be in till 2.9.1!
  • G'Mic for 32bit was impossible. This is due to the way G'Mic is written as a program: it requires a lot of memory to work.
  • In fact, some G'Mic filter's may not work on 64bit windows either...(at the moment)


What's up next: Well, 2.9.1(or 2.9.2, we release a new stable every month) will have the layer styles+more bugfixes. Bugfixes will require your bug reporting of course smile.gif (at bugs.kde.org)
Also, start saving up some cash: New kickstarter coming up soon!
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I like Krita, its got a lot going for it.

That said, trying out 2.9 there are still several areas I'd like to see improvement:

 

-No blur brush (you can sort of mimic it via smudge+scatter+rotate but you have to be careful about pressure not causing too much rotation and warping the paint.)

-PSD export lacks support for layer groups or masks (it applies the masks, and yes this is only counting basic ones that PS could handle)

-Symmetry plane move does not pixel snap so once you move it away from the symmetry point you'll never get that exact symmetry position back again.

-No stroke preview while creating new brushes (have to actually lay down the strokes manually in a tiny little window on the right), or for thumbnails.

 

I also feel like the brush settings (for making custom brushes) UI is a bit bloated atm and could be more streamlined.

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  • 2 months later...
Performance and Animation (and more): Join Krita’s 2015 Kickstarter Project
Let’s make Krita as fast, or faster than Photoshop! That’s this year’s Krita Kickstarter theme — to begin with. Last year’s kickstarter was a big success and all the support resulted in the biggest, best Krita release ever, Krita 2.9, with a huge number of exciting feat...

 


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I tried to like Krita, but it just feels so bloated and sloppy, even though there are quite a few really nice features.

 

The layers panel is especially hideous and unusable, someone did a mockup on their forums (left=how it currently looks. Right=how it should look):

Layers.png

Edited by PolyHertz
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Also, they lied on their last kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/krita/krita-open-source-digital-painting-accelerate-deve/description

 

Photoshop compatibility: "Masks: Load and save transparency masks"

 

As of v2.9.2, exporting to PSD neither saves transparency masks, nor can krita properly load them.

They need to finish their first kickstarters goals before anyone should give them money for another one.

Edited by PolyHertz
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Krita 2.9.4 released!

Published 2015-05-06

We’re not just keeping an eye on the kickstarter campaign (three days and almost at 50%! but go ahead and support us by all means, we’re not there yet!), we’re also working hard on Krita itself. Dmitry is busy with improving the performance of clone layers, adding PSD file support to the Layer Styles feature and fixing loading and saving masks to PSD files (we implemented that in October, but broke it subsequently…), and we’ve got a brand new release for you today.

Well, I made packages for Windows available already on Sunday, but here’s scoop — what’s in, what not! Layer styles, startup speed improvements, memory consumption improvements, bug fixes!

 

 

Big New Things

And we mean big. This is the first release with the layer styles feature sponsored by last year’s kickstarter!

 

  • Implement Photoshop layer styles. Note: this is the first version. Some features are not implemented and we load and save only to Krita’s native file format and ASL style library files (not PSD files yet). There is also still a bug with masks and layer styles
  • make start up faster by not waiting for the presets to be loaded (startup times are now 30-50% faster )
  • Big speed improvement when using transform masks and filters. The move tool is about 20% faster.
  • Reduced the  download size of Krita for Windows by 33% (145MB to 97MB). This is the result of cleaning up unused files and fixing translations

And then there are the bug fixes…

  • Fix the patch count of the color history
  • Lots of fixes to the layout of docker panels, dialogs and other parts of Krita
  • Lots of fixes for special widgets when using the Plastique style
  • Fix issues with resizing the icon size in resource selectors
  • Fix usability issues in the crop tool (reset size settings after doing cropping)
  • Add a function to hide docker titlebars
  • Fix issues with the default settings button
  • Save memory by not loading or saving texture information for brush presets that don’t use textures
  • Automatically add a tag based on the filename for all brush tips from Adobe ABR brush collections
  • Make Export and Save as default to the folder the original file came from
  • Make it possible to switch off compression for layers in kra files (bigger files, but faster saving)
  • Disable opening 32 bit float grayscale TIFF files: we don’t support that yet
  • Fix memory leak when using gradients
  • Fix color serialization from user interface to GMIC (bug 345639)
  • Fix crash when toggling GMIC preview checkbox (bug 344058)
  • Make it possible to re-enable the splash screen
  • Show the label for the sliders inside the slide, to save space.
  • Fix HSV options for the grid and spray brush
  • Don’t show the zoom on-canvas notification while loading an image
  • Fix many memory leaks
  • Fix the specific color selector docker so it doesn’t grow too big
  • Allow the breeze theme to be used on platforms other than KDE
  • Don’t crash when creating a pattern-filled shape if no pattern is selected (bug 346990)
  • Fix loading floating point TIFF files (bug 344334)
  • Fix loading tags for resources from installed bundles
  • Make it possible to ship default tags for our default resources (bug 338134 — needs more work to create a good default definition)
  • Remember the last chosen tag in the resource selectors (bug 346703)
  • Fix bug 346355: don’t say “All presets” in the brush tip selector’s filter

Downloads

OSX:

(Please keep in mind that these builds are unstable and experimental. Stuff is expected not to work. We make them so we know we’re not introducting build problems and to invite hackers to help us with Krita on OSX.)

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  • 2 weeks later...

First Target Reached!

Published 2015-05-18

On Sunday, we made the base target for our Kickstarter! Unless too many backers decide to cancel their pledges, funding for making Krita really, really fast and animation support is secure! Now, of course, is not the time to fold the hands and lean back: it would be a pity if we don’t manage to reach a handful or even more stretch goals!

But having reached this milestone, it’s time to make it easy to back the project through paypal:

You can choose your reward level in the comment, and from 15 euros you’ll get your stretch goal voting rights, of course!

 

Talking about stretch goals… Michael Abrahams surprised us all by submitting a patch on reviewboard that implemented most of the selection tools improvement stretch goal! Shift, alt, shift all, ctrl have been implemented for the polygonal, elliptical and rectangular selection tools. The rest is still todo, so it’s not ready for a build yet.

 

We’ve been busy working on fixing other issues as well... read more

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  • 1 month later...
  • 1 month later...
https://krita.org/item/krita-2-9-7-released/

With over 150 bugs fixed! This is the LAST 2.9 release with new features, and features it has. A new brush engine(via GSoC), a browser for the color spaces, new resizable icons, big improvements to the wrap-around mode, improvements to filters, the path tool, improved assistant-snapping, improved PSD support, check the release notes for the full list!

If you have resource bundles installed, Krita may say something about md5sum mismatch. Don't worry, this should only happen once, and it means that Krita is updating old faulty bundles to have proper md5sums.

After this, we're going full time onto the 3.0 release with only bugfix releases for the 2.9 series. This includes LOD and Animation, which are in a very good shape already, far from ready for release. For those building on Linux, you will need KDE Frameworks 5 and QT5.4 to build current Master. Because this isn't available on LTS releases yet, we're working hard on figuring out portable builds for Linux. You can expect test-builds for Animation and LOD to appear in the coming months!

Also, we're doing a friendly contest to determine which version of Kiki, our cyber-squirrel mascot, gets to go onto the Kickstarter Reward t-shirts! https://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=277&t=128083

Another, more technical note, some information on how Krita handles it's funding: https://krita.org/item/funding-krita/
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  • Carlosan changed the title to KRITA - free open source paint app

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